The road to Paris: The training process

Behind every success there is a story, a story that tells a journey. This time I want to tell the story of our journey to the Paris Olympics and the whole process behind it. I have always believed that one of the best things is to share and inspire others to find their own direction and achieve their own goals.

The beginning

If there was one thing we were clear about from the outset, it was that we wanted to do something completely different with the preparations for the Tokyo Olympics. For many years, the training model has been that the harder you train, the better your results will be – no pain, no gain. But that training model is outdated and doesn’t work in most cases, so we’ve moved from training hard to training smart. This doesn’t mean that there won’t be moments of hard and intense training, but that these moments will be planned during the best moments of preparation and in specific time periods.

The plan

With a clear and firm goal in mind, it is important to develop a long-term plan that frames the entire process in terms of the end goal (in this case, the gold medal at the Paris Olympics). In a normal season, every race is equally important because the goal is to try to win every race. In the process of preparing for the Olympics, the only goal is to win the gold medal, so the other races during the preparation period are just another part of the process, not the goal.

The main preparation period is about 4 months, which we have divided into 3 main phases, each with different goals and focuses. In these 3 phases we prioritized the goals and in each phase we worked on different pillars of badminton performance, technique, tactics, physical preparation and mental preparation.

The first 6 weeks are the 6 weeks before the Asian Championships. During this period, the main training is technical and tactical aspects, and the physical and mental preparation is secondary, just to maintain the best level, but the training load is low. The purpose of this is to have a period of recovery, to be able to start the next stage of preparation in the best condition, not too tired, and to put the physical load first in the 6 weeks after the Asian Games.

We knew that if such a decision was made, they would not be able to compete in the best condition for the Asian Games, and that was the case. I remember that after that match the coaches had some doubts about the preparation process, but we never had any doubts, and we were very clear about the preparation process and what the goal was.

In this chart we can see the last two 6-week preparation periods before the Olympics. The first 6 weeks are before the Singapore and Indonesia competitions.

As I said before, the main objective of this phase is the conditional aspects more than the other aspects. Although we always go step by step to avoid injuries, the training volume is higher in this phase. In the picture on the right, we can see the training load distribution, which I will explain later.

During this time, we did a little taper before the competitions to get in top shape, especially for the first competition because it was the first real test, and we couldn’t evaluate the preparation process. The second competition wasn’t as important because it was the second week of competition and didn’t reflect the situation at the Olympics.

The final preparation period lasted 6 weeks, the last of which was spent in Paris to get used to the change of environment and time. As the main part of the physical preparation had been completed in the previous phase, the aim was to maintain the adaptation and to focus on some specific aspects of the training.

In the final phase, the focus was on mental training. During the preparations, we were fortunate to have the help of a sports psychologist who took the players’ performance to another level. To carry out mental training during this period, we designed a match week that simulated the Olympics. During the 6-day competition, they played against a variety of opponents, and in each game, we included a series of rules to try and create tension in the game so that the players could solve the complex situations they might encounter in a real game. In competitions like the Olympics, the psychological factor is crucial to the outcome and the players worked with the sports psychologist on many aspects throughout the process.

In addition, some training was carried out during this period that was more in line with the actual situation of the game, so that all aspects were fully developed.

Training Load

Training load can be defined as the cumulative stress on an individual resulting from one or more training sessions (structured or unstructured) over a period of time.

Monitoring an athlete’s training load has become an integral part of a training program, always with the aim of helping the athlete adapt and improve. Technology allows us to objectively understand both external and internal loads.

Combined with external load information, internal load data can provide a complete picture of training load, giving coaches a deeper understanding of the physiological demands placed on athletes during training, while providing quantitative data to show whether training has had the desired effect.

Thanks to Catapult, we can monitor our daily training load during preparation, including data such as workload, number of jumps, changes of direction, accelerations and decelerations… The external load data allows us to analyze our training on the track.

In addition, technology allows us to analyze various aspects of internal load, i.e. the athlete’s response to the external load. Some of the data we have are heart rate, heart rate variability, fatigue levels…

With this information, we can monitor and objectively analyze all training sessions. Not increasing the load gradually and with spikes can increase the risk of sports injuries.

Physical preparation

As mentioned above, the main phase of physical training was in the second 6 weeks. We believe that if you start preparing for the Olympics too early, it will be difficult to maintain the adaptations you have made and be in top condition for the Olympics.

During the high load training, we spread the training loads throughout the week to achieve the desired adaptation effects without increasing the risk of injury.

We usually do strength training twice a week, separately. In the general preparation phase, the aim is to improve the general level of strength and prepare for the more specific strength training phase, while seeking a transfer to badminton-specific movements. In this work, the two players have different objectives, depending on their characteristics and the demands of the game. 

As for the cardiovascular endurance training, we plan to do it in the two 6-week periods before the competition. We do not include continuous running or athletics in the endurance training because I believe that this type of work is not the most suitable for badminton players.

The endurance training was divided into three parts. The first part was integrative training, i.e. exercises performed on the field to improve cardiovascular endurance. The second part was more focused on general physiological adaptations, we used Versaclimber we were able to do a very high intensity cardiovascular workout with less impact.

The last mode, “worst case”, refers to the most demanding parts of the game. These situations occur during critical moments of the game (such as shots, goals or misses) and are often referred to as ‘repeated sprints’ (e.g. football, hockey) or ‘repeated high-intensity efforts’ (e.g. basketball, football, ice hockey).

Regularly exposing athletes to the most demanding parts of competition in training (with adequate rest) can improve their ability to withstand these demands in competition.

Tapering

Tapering is the practice of athletes reducing their training load in the final days before a major competition in order to optimise performance. The reduction in training load can be achieved by altering several components, including volume, intensity and frequency, as well as the type of tapering (i.e. progressive or incremental) and duration. Tapering is used in a wide variety of sports with different biomechanical and physiological demands to outperform the competition.

Our taper was the last two weeks of training where we drastically reduced our training volume but maintained our training intensity. Maintaining training intensity is the key factor in competing in peak condition.

Reducing total training volume to 41%-60% of pre-training volume can achieve the goal of enhancing training effects. Training volume can be adjusted by shortening the duration of each training session and/or reducing the frequency of training.

Summary

There are many details in our treatment process, such as nutrition, recovery, treatment, etc. Most importantly, multidisciplinary cooperation is the foundation of this process. Today, athletes need the support of professionals to help them maximize their performance. Strength and conditioning coaches, technical coaches, physiotherapists, doctors, nutritionists, all of them are necessary. The model where the coach is above everything and makes all the decisions is outdated and has no place in today’s sports.